With the introduction of the blog, creating a local community-driven Online News Website has become much easier than using a conventional website.
blogging platform
Install WordPress on your new domain or a subdomain of your existing domain. A new domain is preferred for your local community driven online news website for indexing, ranking and searchability.
Choose and install a suitable WordPress theme for your local, online, community-driven news website from the thousands available for free on the web.
Design your header and customize the look and feel of your online, local and community-led news website.
At the most basic level, your new local community-driven online news website is now ready to go.
get indexed
Of course, there is a lot of search engine optimization (SEO) work that can be done to improve your indexing and ranking. You should at least have a link to a page somewhere on the web that is regularly crawled so search engines can find your new local community powered online news website.
A link from your own home page is enough.
Alternatively, you can join one or more of the blogs, social networks and submit your website news online. It would also be helpful to submit your online, local and community powered news website URL to different directories. These submissions from your community-driven news website will not only get you indexed, but the backlinks will increase your SEO score, which will help your ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
So, with so much development work done, your local online news website is ready to be crawled, indexed, and ranked in the SEs when you start publishing community-driven news from your local area.
To work
WordPress ships with a post titled Hello World and a comment on this post. Remove both and start over.
news sources
In addition to writing your own news, there are two main sources of community news:
* Press releases.* Community group presentations.
Press releases
In Australia, there are three levels of government: local, state and federal. Each will issue regular press releases. State and federal government press releases will come not only from the respective government websites, but also from the websites of the various parties and respective politicians.
Pay attention to press releases from your local, state and federal members, whether in government, opposition, small party or independent. Also check regularly for press releases from ministers responsible for portfolios that are of interest to your readers or that match your editorial bias.
There are likely to be a number of commercial and industrial companies in your area, as well as special interest groups, such as environmental lobby groups, that issue press releases.
Community Group Submissions
Getting community group submissions for your local online news website is a lot more work. But these will be of more interest to your readers and contact with the locals will increase your readership. And, of course, community group news submissions are at the core of their stated goal of providing a community-driven online news service.
Find a directory of local sports and community groups. Email groups if email addresses are specified. They probably won't be.
If necessary, write to us by post. Your news feed email is in front of them, reducing the chance of errors.
Talk to the secretary of the community group in person and give them a business card or flyer with your email address.
Calling community groups is the least valuable option due to the difficulty they have in finding your local community-driven online news website on the Internet or getting your correct email address.
The Wall